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BY TED GIRARD
Ournational security is becom-
ing increasingly reliant on
the ability to rapidly manage
and quickly use the growing amount of
military and intelligence data available at
any given moment. As part of President
Obama’s 2012 Big Data Research and
Development Initiative, the Defense
Department was among six major agen-
cies that committed funding to develop
tools and techniques needed to access,
organize and glean discoveries from
huge volumes of data. The end goal: to
improve situational awareness to help
warfighters and analysts, as well as
provide increased support to military
operations.
Nearly three years later, military forces
continue to face complex and intrigu-
ing challenges related to the dramatic
increase in data – they are simply over-
loaded with information. U.S. military
intelligence analysts continuously sift
through vast and varied data sets, from
cellphone records, email and text files
to more advanced satellite imagery and
intelligence, surveillance and recon-
naissance (ISR) data from drones.
Consider just the massive data growth
from drones and other surveillance
technology:
• Video streaming of the military’s Dis-
tributed Common Ground System totals
over 7 terabytes daily.
• The Air Force ISR Agency collects
about 1,600 hours of video per day.
• A single 14-hour drone mission can
generate about 70 terabytes of data.
These new sources of data are provid-
ing a wealth of new information but they
also pose problems with respect to data
management and integration challenges.
Much of the data that military and intel-
ligence communities collect and analyze
exists on different platforms, in different
forms and in different environments. In
addition to the volume, sharing relevant
and critical data is growing
more complex by the day for
both soldiers out in the field
and for defense profession-
als operating in command
centers.
Why deploy data
virtualization?
The need to turn big data
into actionable insights that can be swift-
ly disseminated to military leaders and
key decision-makers can be a matter of
life or death for our warfighters. Today’s
harsh realities of digital warfare, cyber-
security, global terrorism and homeland
security demand that critical data from
multiple sources – structured and un-
structured – be integrated in order to
provide better intelligence, information
sharing and timely delivery.
Virtualization involves creating a vir-
tual version of a specific item – this in-
cludes a server, application or database.
Data virtualization is the process of ab-
stracting different data sources through
a single “virtual” data access layer to
provide unified access and integrated
data services to users and applications in
real time. A big data analytics platform
becomes much more valuable when you
can access, analyze and disseminate the
data “on demand.”
With virtualization, you can update
and refresh large databases in a frac-
tion of the time, create multiple copies
of a reporting system in parallel and at
different points in time, and share the
information with relevant stakeholders
instantly to facilitate better decision-
making. Historical snapshots provide
mission teams with the best information
to detect changes in behavior, position
and/or other relevant activity.
More big reasons
In addition to increasing
agility in data manage-
ment, virtualizing the data
eliminates the bottlenecks
associated with provision-
ing new environments and
backing up or refreshing
applications and databases.
Other game-changing advantages
for defense and intelligence agencies
include:
• Increased project output by up to 80
percent.
• 90 percent reduction in infrastructure
space requirements.
• Greater quality assurance with signifi-
cantly fewer data-related errors.
• No production system downtime.
In order to protect our national secu-
rity at home and abroad, U.S. military
and intelligence agencies must find
ways that utilize the best technologies
to improve the integration and dis-
semination of disparate pieces of data
quickly. The adoption of data virtu-
alization is proving to be a viable and
cost-effective solution within DOD as
it strives to increase situational aware-
ness and enhance military operations.
An agile approach to data management
is now possible providing huge cost
savings and greater access – enabling
DOD to execute at a higher rate of suc-
cess and stay ahead of the game. n
Ted Girard is Vice President of Delphix
Federal.
All those terabytes of data can be made available on demand
Big data and virtualization
Industry Perspective
32 MARCH/APRIL 2015 | DefenseSystems.com
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